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About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mai... (More)

About this blog: I was a "corporate brat" growing up and lived in different parts of the country, ending in Houston, Texas for high school. After attending college at UC Davis, and getting an MBA at Harvard, I embarked on a marketing career, mainly in the Bay Area with different companies. My former wife went back to medical school after we had been married a few years, and we moved into married student housing at Stanford, had our two now adult children while she was a medical student, and moved into Palo Alto when she started her Residency. Been here ever since. As my kids were going through the Palo Alto schools, I was actively involved in their activities, most notably head umpire for Palo Alto Little League and 9 years as a member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, among other activities. My kids both are grown, my son teaches 5th grade locally, and my daughter, fluent in Mandarin, is working in China. I sold the business I owned and ran for 8 years in 2012, worked on the Obama campaign, and am consulting for non-profit organizations, which gives me a nice, flexible schedule. Lots of stamps in my passport, and for fun, I like live performances &emdash; theater and music - and of course the Giants! (Hide)

National Anthem at SuperBowl

Uploaded: Feb 6, 2011

I really have no clue who the woman is who "sung" the Star Spangled Banner prior to the start of the game today.

I do suspect that she was making more than minimum wage to perform in front of a stadium packed with 100 thousand plus people, let alone those watching and listening worldwide. I also have the impression that she is a professional entertainer, albeit one I know nothing about.

How insulting to this country and a debasement to an annual tradition, the SuperBowl, for a highly paid entertainer to screw up our country's national anthem in such circumstances.

Oh please, paul. Try writing about important issues, not this nonsense. Do some homework before you write, I believe the performers at the support bowl do not get paid for their appearance. Insulting? A debasement?

You feign your ignorance regarding the name of performer (Cristina Aguilera) because to kmow it wouldn't be right for a follower of NPR or the NYT which you love to drop all the time. Please stop trying so hard to be an elitist.

The words to the National Anthem are complicated once one gets beyond Verse 1.
According to the latest 'headline news', the teleprompter mixed things up. But I agree, the National Anthem gets massacred at many athletic performances. Bring back the NYC policeman, now studying opera, who sang is repeatedly after 9/11.

The idea of somehow tying in sports, Football, and patriotism, and God all in one big phone overproduced sports events where we have celebrities trying to pull 350 million people together just seems sickening to me. It's a football game ... it's not even baseball. But baseball is not even baseball anymore, the "national pastime" like all sports is full of criminals, rapists, drug users and abusers. Year after year goes by and our spectacles get bigger while our standing compared to other countries in things like education and health care continues to plummet.

I know how upset, outraged and disturbed you were by the events at the Super Bowl. Maybe this will make you feel better.
Of course you may want to ask the city council to issue a proclamation regarding this earth shattering and disturbing incident,which will surely be the talk in world capitals all week.

This ditzy entertainer should never have been put out there. She is a real mess in her personal life, apparently, and she should never have been entrusted to get our National Anthem right. The NFL needs to look into its money-making soul (OK, that is probably an oxymoron), and at least try to get back to basics. After all, many of us who watch this thing like our patriotism the old-fashioned way.

Football is a basic sport (crush the other team, and defeat them!). This ain't rocket science. The NFL corporate elite need to strap on their pads, and get back to the trenches.

You can argue all you want about the song, at least it proves they don't pre-record it anymore.

But that advertising!!! My (gay) friend was HOWLING at the various crude puns and double entendres in all those ads, we couldn't believe how awful it was. Re-watch them. It's more than the Mini ad "can you cram it into my boot" and the Dorito guy sucking another's finger.

I was appalled. And hey, think how bad it had to be to reach my level of the absurd...

;-)

Best ad from a branding perspective: The Audi snobs escape from prison ad. And Kenny G has a sense of humor.

They would have practiced the song, before they got up there, in that setting, and they would not have let personal issues get in the way. The ditz who was up there last night was completely out of her league. So is the NFL.

The National Anthem is EVERY citizen?s anthem. Who gets to decide the proper rendition?

?An Indiana school district that told a black teenager to perform "The Star-Spangled Banner" in a "traditional way" after receiving complaints about her performance is drawing questions now about whether the complaints and directive were racially motivated.? Web Link

If you want to be insulted or appalled, go rent ?Inside Job? or ?The Tillman Story.?

Someone needs to calm louis down. I believe someone else posted a link of the singer performing the anthem write nicely at two NBA games. Calling her a ditz and a druggie serves no useful purpose. The anthem is nice but it Is a refuge of sunshine patriots who feel that singing the anthem means they have done something for our country.

For Alfred E Newman, Purple Haze was written by Bob Dylan as was All Along the Watchtower. And the tune for our anthem (NOT officially regarded as such until well after the Civil War) was lifted from a British drinking song.

Even professionals get nervous. This performer performed a challenging rendition of the song, and clearly had practiced. I've had to perform in front of people and no matter how prepared you are, sometimes the words just come out wrong. Like a true professional, she finished the song with dignity. If she had been wasted or grabbed her crotch or something, I can see feeling insulted, but she did not. She gave a spirited performance of an arrangement that is challenging and complex, and made a small mistake with the lyrics. The performance I found insulting was that of the Black Eyed Peas, not one of whom demonstrated a scrap of talent.

There's a great American Flag display at the Smithsonian with Jimi Hedndrix's rendition of the anthem playing in the background. If you don't tear up when you hear it, you ain't American... or probably Palo Altan

Yes, she flubbed the National Anthem. And, she apologized. Ms. Aguilera has performed the Anthem at large events ever since she was a little girl. As a child she sang the Anthem at the Stanley Cup finals in Pittsburgh. She also provides significant support for charities, including a battered womens' shelter that she sponsored along with Bill Cowher's late wife. She is NOT a bad person. She just made a mistake.

I'm surprised that so many people (not just on this site) are posting about how her performance was an insult to America. She simply made a mistake under pressure. She wasn't trying to be offensive, as was Roseanne Barr a few years back. She's an experienced professional singer and it was a mistake - certainly an embarassing one - plain and simple.

Christina Aguilera gives a whole new meaning to the word..."Twit" why they chose her to sing the anthem, we will never know. What a travesty. Glad I was out hiking and didnt waste my time watching the Superbowl. I can't take the massive onslaught of stupid commercials....what a waste of time!

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